“Good day!” Merlin shouted heartily, causing the scruffy kid to drop their bucket.
They eyed him, then the well. “Did you spring from the roots of the stone?”
“Stones don’t have roots,” he quipped, though he enjoyed the way this language lent itself to metaphor. His future-y friends had been so amused by his allegorical loquaciousness, but it was a remnant of his origins, a rare one he actually treasured. Not that he knew his precise origins. The farthest back he could remember was waking up in the crystal cave, ancient and alone.
“Then where did you come from?” the small stranger asked.
Merlin suppressed the desire to say a galaxy far, far away. “I’m from Camelot.”
He was only half a foot taller than this young person, which begged the question, how old was Merlin these days? Was it possible he’d gotten younger since they left the future? Perhaps the portal had shaved off more of his life. A penalty for time travel? Morgana had given up her existence to send them back, while Excalibur had broken to bits. Was this his price?
He loved magic, but sometimes it was unmistakably the worst.
The kid grumbled as they sent the bucket down the well, while Merlin twisted water from the ruby robes Ari had gifted him on Ketch. He tried not to look suspicious, though that ship had probably sailed to distant seas by now. First things first, he needed to find the crowds. Ari was always at the center of the action, the others not far behind. They were her little ducklings. Thinking of Jordan and her knightly skills, he course-corrected: lethal ducklings. “What’s happening today? Where is everyone?”
“All attend King Arthur’s wedding,” the kid said, sweating under the weight of the bucket as they brought it back up. “He takes his bride in the tournament ring.”
Oh, yes, the ever-delightful treatment of women as possessions. He was definitely back.
Something clicked oddly. “Gweneviere? Arthur is already marrying Gweneviere?” He didn’t know why he was surprised. He’d commanded the portal to take them back to Arthur’s eighteenth birthday season, which had been a particularly momentous time for the young king and a rather squishy blank period in Merlin’s memories. That’s when the enchanted chalice had appeared—and disappeared—and that’s what Arthur’s spirit had sent them back to retrieve.
“The Lady Gweneviere comes from afar,” the kid said eagerly. “An exotic beauty. My friend says she’s a force for good in Camelot, but my mother believes she bewitched the king.”
Ah, another piece of the past he hadn’t missed. The perfect storm of antipolitical, cultural, and social correctness. His friends were in for a migraine of homophobic, racist, and gender-related fuckery. He had to find them. Fast.
“Where is the wedding?” he barked, making the kid jump.
They pointed beyond the city walls, and Merlin left at a run. His path wound him around Camelot’s central castle, as glowering as it was grand, with eight-foot-thick walls, stones capped with dark moss, and mere arrow slits for windows. He forced himself not to look up at the tallest tower. Another version of him might be up there, even now. Merlin had told his friends he didn’t want to expose them to the horrors of the Middle Ages, which was true, but some of those horrors weren’t just historical. They were deeply, deeply personal. He had to avoid a run-in with his old self at all costs.
“Shouldn’t be hard,” he murmured. “As long as we stay out of the castle and don’t cause any scenes.” How likely was it that Ari had found trouble in the few minutes they’d been apart?
Good heavens, Merlin needed to sprint.
As his breath cut short and his feet rubbed against the inside of his wet boots, he soothed himself with one of his focused to-do lists. Merlin had to find his friends, steal the chalice, and make a new time portal to return them to the night they left.
Oh, he thought, three steps. Always a good sign.
In the back of his mind he added less immediate, but ever-important hopes: to protect Gwen’s baby, reverse his ridiculous backward aging, and release Arthur’s spirit from Ari’s body, allowing the dead king to finally rest. To end this cursed cycle once and for all. But surely those things would happen if they made it back to the future and irreversibly stopped Mercer.
“Piece of—” A scent wafted over him. “Delicious roasted meat.”
A cheer rifled the air, and the cacophony led him through the main gates and up a dirt road slick with mud. In the near distance, atop a perfectly green hill, a proud tournament ring held thousands of people and quite the celebration. The pennants were flying, bearing the red dragon and Excalibur. More promising smells hit. His stomach roared, and he told it to stop being so Kay-like.
He pushed himself to remember the less-than-admirable qualities of this place. Even from a distance, the divisions of an unequal society stood out. Commoners huddled together on the edges of the ring, while the nobles kept comfy seats under the dyed red pavilions. If Merlin dared to ask anyone their pronouns, he might very well be treated as more dangerous than a rogue mage.
Merlin elbowed through the commoners for a better look. He was a bit grimy from well climbing, which helped him fit in with this foul-smelling bunch. Musicians lit up horns, and the crowd stilled with anticipation. Everything looked and sounded and felt like the start of a royal celebration.
He really had come out of the time portal at the right moment. It was the first bit of good news since Ketch, when for a few glorious nights he’d believe the universe was free of the Mercer Company’s oily grasp and headed for the end of the Arthurian cycle. He had celebrated with Val and copious amounts of kissing.
Val. They had all gotten separated in the time portal—Ari first, then Gwen, Lam, and Jordan—but Val and Merlin had been
